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This timely, fascinating, readable book is devoted mainly to publishing the first extensive collection of Klein's clinical notes, selected by Christine English, Melanie Klein Archive archivist. It also includes a detailed introduction and conclusion drawing together the main clinical features of the material presented. The clinical notes themselves, of Klein's analysis of Mr B, an adult patient, are drawn from Klein's archive. The notes explicate Klein as a psychoanalyst of adults, as redress to this little explored important aspect of her work. The notes clinically illuminate many of her theories and complement and provide the first adult equivalent publication to Klein's Narrative of a Child Analysis (1961).
Although relatively short, at just over 200 pages, the book represents perhaps the most protracted published psychoanalysis case of an adult, covering 135 sessions between the mid–late 1930s and the mid 1940s. Long cases are rarely published, as few psychoanalysts maintain such remarkable, extensive clinical notes and publication is complicated by protection of patient anonymity. This is perhaps one reason why this collection was not published until now. These detailed notes, presented in a relatively novel and engaging way with annotations providing some descriptions, offer the possibility of in-depth exploration of Klein's clinical technique and approach to being in relationship with her patients. The notes are, therefore, of particular importance to trainees, clinicians, historians of psychoanalysis, and other scholars that are more familiar with Klein's work with children.
English's book includes material that conveys a sense of Klein's painstaking and undoubtedly demanding determination, rigor, sensitivity and patience with a patient whose internal world was full of intense phantasies, dreams, desires, and very effecting and attacking feelings. These were frequently directed at Klein, largely when her patient became particularly psychologically unwell after